Wayne Steadham says he has attended every Walnut Valley Festival.
Counting this year, that’s 52.
He was living in Winfield when organizers announced the first festival in 1972, originally called the “Walnut Valley Bluegrass Festival and National Flat-Picking Championship.” It was changed to “Walnut Valley Festival” in 1980.
Musicians Dan Crary, Lester Flatt, New Grass Revival, and Doc and Merle Watson were some of the performers at the inaugural festival held at the Cowley County Fairgrounds. But guitarist Norman Blake stood out to Steadham, and he told his girlfriend they were going to see him.
After that first festival, they noticed that music wasn’t happening only on stages, but out in the parking lots and campgrounds, too. Steadham discovered “parking lot picking” – where any number of people with a wide array of instruments go around the circle and trade songs and solos long into the night.
The next year, he camped in the Pecan Grove at the fairgrounds.
“There were all kinds of instruments -- bones, fiddles, guitars, banjos -- and I thought to myself that maybe I should bring my guitar and find some like-minded folks and pick, and that's what I did at about the second one, I think, is when I first camped,” Steadham said.
“What I was really interested in was old-fashioned fiddle tunes, and those were being played over in the West Campground amongst quite a few old timers. And I then moved my camp the next year to the West Campground and joined in with the fiddlers. And it’s been fun. It really has been.”
Steadham’s camp in the West Campground is called the “Pickin’ Parlor Branch Office.” It’s a nod to where he and his friends would gather on weekends to play music when there wasn’t a festival.
He said while he and his campmates do play music, it’s a community feel throughout the festival grounds.
“I've often told people when I'm trying to convince them to come that, ‘Yeah, it's just a music event with a crafts fair that's outstanding.’ But if you go to it and you participate in it, it can change your life.
“And I've talked to so many people who said, ‘September, third weekend, I'm going to be in Winfield. That's where I'm going to be.’”
Steadham has advice if you are thinking about going to the Walnut Valley Festival.
“By all means, come and attend some of the stage shows, but get away from the stage and go out in the campgrounds and see what the people do,” he said. “That's where you'll see the spirit of Winfield.
“The warmth and the kindness, you're going to get that out in the campground where the campers are. To me, they're the lifeblood of the festival. They’re committed. They're coming every year no matter what floods have come, run them out of the campground, and they would go to the city lake, but they're there.”
Some years, the Walnut River has overflowed its banks, and the Cowley County Fairgrounds is in the flood plain. So, people in the campgrounds have to move to Winfield City Lake, about 25 minutes away from the festival site.
Steadham had a long list of notable acts he’s seen throughout the years. In the 1970s, he recalled Hot Rize’s alter ego group Red Knuckles and the Trailblazers; autoharpist Bryan Bowers captivating a crowd during a rainstorm; Sam Bush’s New Grass Revival, and fiddler Byron Berline. In more recent years, Steadham noted finger-style guitarist Tommy Emmanuel, guitarist Billy Strings and banjo phenom Béla Fleck.
Steadham, though, still comes back to the campground culture as being the heartbeat behind the Walnut Valley Festival.
“Everybody's camp is named and, you know people from certain camps,” he said, “and we, in the Winfield tradition, started making a guitar pick here. We make one of those every year, and people come by and pick, and we give them a guitar pick. And if they play at the Pickin’ Parlor, we have stickers for their case that have our little logo on them.
“So that kind of tradition thing. People walk around and exchange picks from their camps. You get a chance to get away from your day-to-day and think about nothing but music and having fun.”
Steadham credits a friend who used to say, “instead sending armies to fight wars, we should send bluegrass musicians to show them how to have a festival.”
That’s stuck with him through the years, because, he said, “It’s a whole lot more fun to play music … than it is to fight.”
Copyright 2024 KMUW | NPR for Wichita
